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Inside Politics

Hegseth Says Black Hawk Flight Data Recorder Still Not Recovered; Dems Set To Elect New Chair As Party Plots Path Back To Power; Democrats Show New Urgency To Fight In Trump's Second Week; Trump Says He'll Slap Tariffs On Canada And Mexico Tomorrow. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired January 31, 2025 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


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[12:34:36]

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: At this hour, first responders are dealing with frigid temperatures, dangerous debris as they continue to search the Potomac for victims' remains and any potential clues to help investigators. Now, officials now have their hands on the two black boxes from that American Airlines passenger jet, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says they still haven't found the data recorder from the Black Hawk helicopter.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand is at the Pentagon following this investigation. Natasha, President Trump on social media seems to be blaming the military pilots here. What's the reaction been at the Pentagon?

[12:35:07]

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Well Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, he actually would not go as far as the President did on Truth Social earlier this morning. In an interview with Fox, he said that the causes of the crash are still under investigation, including, perhaps, whether they were flying too high, whether they diverted off of the appropriate flight path. But he said that that is something that the investigation has yet to determine.

Here's a bit of what he said.

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PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: We're looking at altitude, and the President was clear about that. Someone was at the wrong altitude. The investigation will help us understand that. Was the Black Hawk too high? Was it on course? Right now, we don't quite know.

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BERTRAND: Now, this is part of the reason, of course, why it's so important for them to get that flight recorder, that black box. So far, they have not yet recovered it, but it's going to be very instructive in trying to figure out whether they were flying above the approved altitude of around 200 feet, whether they have deviated from that very specific flight path that they were supposed to be on. All of that is still unclear at the moment, Phil.

MATTINGLY: And I think this all kind of drives to the point where we're spending a lot of time talking about everything around this, and probably not enough time talking about the people who died because of this. What are you learning about those who are on that Black Hawk helicopter?

BERTRAND: Well, we know as of now, the two -- two of the identities of the Army crew members who were on board, including the instructor pilot, who was Chief Warrant Officer 2, Andrew Eaves, who's from Mississippi. And according to Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, he said that he is mourning the loss of Brooksville Native Chief Warrant Officer 2, Andrew Eaves, who was killed in the accident over Reagan National Airport.

This was the instructor pilot who, according to our sources, had over a thousand hours of flight time. So definitely not inexperienced by any means. And then the other crew member that we know of was Ryan O'Hara, who was the Black Hawk crew chief. And essentially, he was responsible for making sure, sitting in the back of that Black Hawk, that everything was kind of going correctly in a technical way.

So he was responsible for the maintenance of the aircraft as well. And so, we don't yet know the identity of that third crew member who was the co-pilot, but we are hoping to get more information from the Army soon. And we should note that not all of their bodies have been recovered yet, Phil.

MATTINGLY: Yes. And our thoughts and prayers are with their families and loved ones.

Natasha Bertrand from the Pentagon, thanks so much.

Up next, Democrats have spent three months struggling to find new ways to fight Trump's agenda. Was this the week they found their voice?

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[12:42:04]

MATTINGLY: Tomorrow, Democrats will elect a new chair of the Democratic National Committee. And this new leader, got a pretty daunting task in front of them, most importantly helping to rebuild the party on some level, figuring out how they can actually win again.

My panel is back with me. I want to start with this because the Quinnipiac poll that just came out, I think is pretty jarring when you look at where Democrats stand. The favorability rating, 31 percent, unfavorable, 57 percent. Republicans are at 43 percent, 45 percent.

Highest percentage of voters having an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party since the Q poll began asking the question in 2008. Seems like a tough job for whoever wins tomorrow. What's your sense of, you know, we were talking during the break, the party kind of lit up a little bit this week. How do they feel about the longer term?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: This week after going -- after last week, right? I think, you know, I focus specifically on immigration and the responses on that front. I remember 2017, where very quickly there was outrage over everything that President Donald Trump was doing on this issue.

It has been relatively quiet over the last week and change. And there have been sweeps across the country picking up undocumented immigrants. But they kicked off their sort of immigration messaging by joining Republicans on the Laken Riley Act, which if you really dig into it, has some pretty big sweeping changes to immigration law.

And now just yesterday, I saw a tweet by Senator Chris Murphy sort of showing off that President Biden had more deportations in one week than President Trump has had. And sort of it was a different type of messaging that wasn't so much about we shouldn't be going after certain populations and more so about trying to show that the former president was very tough on this issue.

And President Donald Trump hasn't measured up yet. So it's been interesting sort of watching how they're evolving on a very -- signature issue for the president, but also a very divisive issue for the country.

MATTINGLY: And a divisive issue inside the party, given, as you covered better than anybody, the splits inside the Biden administration throughout the last four years, you know, ought to like broaden out from just the immigration. I think this gets at the point nobody really knows necessarily what kind of the through line big picture policy drivers will be for the Democratic Party, at least at this point.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I love that you're asking that question this way. And that was such a good point, because immigration is an issue where they pulled to the right over time, right, trying to find this middle.

But I think the other thing we're forgetting is, like, what is their platform? If you go looking around for senators or lawmakers, yes, they woke up this week because they had to be in front of hearing microphones. But for the activist class that has lost Twitter to Elon Musk, that they're not, obviously TikTok was sort of down for the count and also its leadership is pandering to Trump and the attempts to save it from losing its from being purchased.

And then you have, like, I don't know, some sub stacks. Like, it's hard to know where the loud, progressive activist voices who used to make the biggest stink before can go to be heard. And once they go there, how does that, like, spur into action?

[12:45:02]

Meanwhile, the institutions like the DNC, like these senators, they're struggling, because they took the last election, maybe not as a mandate, but certainly as a rejection of some of the ideas that they had been holding to in the prior years.

And then you have Gavin Newsom, who is dealing with the remnants and the, like, destruction in California. So the person who said they would lead the resistance is busy, like, taking care of his home state. So you're asking the perfect question, like, who steps in or whom? How many people? What do they have to say? And like, what do they consider the direction the party should go in?

JOSH DAWSEY, POLITICAL INVESTIGATIONS REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: I think it's...

MATTINGLY: One other -- wait, just real quick, because I want to play this. When we saw the spark from Democrats this week, it was related to an OMB memo that froze a bunch of programs, was very poorly crafted and designed, and they took advantage of that. But it was primarily because people reacted to it.

They were bombarding offices with phone calls, making clear they had a problem with it. And this is what some of the Democrats said.

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SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D), CONNECTICUT: It's all corrupt. It's all an effort for him just to pout the pockets of his billionaire buddies. And I'm just very disturbed that he seems interested in getting around the court orders instead of obeying the court orders.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D), MINORITY LEADER: Donald Trump, with his cruel policy, has aroused the American people and begun to show them how this administration is not for working families, but for the billionaires.

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DAWSEY: Well, it did seem that the first two weeks, I mean, Trump, whether you hate Trump, love Trump, whatever, has been an onslaught of things, right? I mean, he's come at every agency, he's come at government workers, he's come at, you know, the federal spending, tried to, you know, overturn birthright citizenship again, pardoned 1,600 people, including some of the violent J6 folks.

I mean, he has really done a lot to anger Democrats. And at first, it did not seem like there was that much of a response to him and some of what he was doing. And that seems to be growing by the time. I mean, you remember in 2017, the famous, the protests, the marches, the resistance, I mean, that inauguration was not a big party in Washington.

People were really concerned about his presidency and his administration. I mean, it's corporate America was, the Democratic Party was. You saw this kind of groundswell. This time, I mean, it was some of the craziest parties I've ever seen in D.C. You've seen very little protest of him.

And now it seems more that he's sort of reminding people some of the things that he's going to do. And to be fair, he said he was going to do all of these things on the campaign trail. So people should not be very surprised. You're seeing folks wake up.

I mean, I was talking to just some friends of mine in my personal life this week who were saying that they were getting back involved after being sort of dissociated for the last few months. And I'm curious to see if other folks will see that or not. I don't know.

MATTINGLY: Yes. They've got big picture and big issues to try and figure out. But clearly, something resonated this week, perhaps word choice wise arousal, not what we should be going with. But the idea is we need to connect with people and be normal. Who am I to judge?

Thank you to the panel.

Tomorrow is the day President Trump promised huge new tariffs on Canada and Mexico. How soon would higher prices follow if he goes through with it? Stay with us.

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[12:52:38]

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'll be putting the tariff of 25 percent on Canada and separately 25 percent on Mexico, and we will really have to do that because we have very big deficits with those countries. It's coming on the 1st, Saturday.

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MATTINGLY: So if you're like me, and January has felt like six years long, just a calendar reminder, Saturday the 1st, that's actually tomorrow. Now, besides evening out the trade deficit, the President is also hoping to force Canada and Mexico to take steps to stop illegal migrants and fentanyl from crossing the border.

It's unclear exactly what all these new tariffs will target, but one thing is clear. If all of this launches a trade war with two of the U.S.'s biggest trading partners, rather than bringing everyone to the bargaining table, the prices Americans will pay for all sorts of things, maybe avocados, potentially gasoline, it could all go up.

CNN's Matt Egan is here. And Matt, to start, do we have any idea whether or not the President's going to go through with something and what that something may be?

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Phil, it's not clear yet whether or not these tariffs are going to go into place. But what is clear is President Trump views tariffs as a magical negotiating tool that can solve just about any problem, and that belief must have been bolstered by last weekend when Colombia backed down in a deportation fight with Trump after he threatened massive tariffs.

But remember, we're not just talking about U.S. tariffs on Canada and Mexico, we're talking about them retaliating in, yes, a full-blown trade war. And this would be really risky because it could worsen the cost-of-living problem that Trump has promised to solve.

Remember, these are two of our biggest trading partners. Last year alone, the U.S. imported $400 billion of goods from Canada, everything from lumber and minerals to oil. And it's also going to be a major problem for the auto industry, which is just so closely linked in North America.

Analysts have said that this would be devastating for the auto industry, that it would increase the average cost of a car sold in the U.S. by $3,000. And we know people are frustrated by the cost-of- living and prices at the grocery store, but we import a lot of food from Mexico, including 91 percent of all imported tomatoes come from Mexico, and most of, 89 percent of the avocados that are imported into the U.S. also come from Mexico.

[12:55:02]

RSM Economist Joe Brusuelas told me Trump is, quote, "playing with fire here when it comes to inflation." And he added, if you go ahead and spike taxes on avocados days before the Super Bowl, he said, watch how that turns out. Phil?

MATTINGLY: Can I ask real quick before we go on oil? This has been something a lot of people have been talking about. Could there be a carve out there? Why are people concerned about oil specifically?

EGAN: Because Canada is the biggest source of foreign oil into the United States. We import four times as much oil every single day from Canada than we do from OPEC. And Mexico is another major source of foreign oil into the United States.

And so that's why the oil industry is pleading with President Trump to have a carve out here, don't apply these 25 percent tariffs on oil and natural gas, because they're warning that if that does happen, you're going to see gasoline prices go higher and higher.

One oil industry source told me today, he said, this is an example of trade that works for Americans. He said, don't screw it up with tariffs. Phil?

MATTINGLY: Matt Egan, thanks so much.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right after the break.

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